How Google Might Fail?

Thomas Claburn has an interesting article that appeared in Information Week titled, "How Google Might Fail" that presents a fairly well-thought out analysis of some of the challenges Google faces. The Information Commons was mentioned in the "Distributed Databases" section in the following manner:

Distributed Databases
Search, at the moment, works best with a centralized index. That may not always be the case. Peer-to-peer networking and distributed database projects like the Information Commons may obviate the need for a centralized system.

Risk: Moderate. Efficient peer-to-peer searching requires significantly faster network infrastructure than currently exists — Google built that infrastructure from scratch and it will retain that advantage for some time. But it makes much more sense for companies to control their databases than to rely on Google's index as a pointer to their data. If the trend is truly toward disintermediation — removing the middleman — then Google has to think long and hard about how far into the future it can play that role.

It's really nice to see that the media is starting to pick up on the Information Commons concept on their own. Only time will tell if we are the disruptive technology others think we are, whether the market adapts well to the change from client-server to p2p architecture.

Just back from SciFoo, which was really an amazing experience. Tim O'Reilly and Nature invited just under 200 scientists and technologists to come together in the same space to see what happens. The result was a fantastic cocktail of innovative expression and thinking between the science and tech communities. My colleage, Mike Higgins, wrote a great summary of his experience there that reflects a lot of my experience there.

I'm going to start this blog up again to track some of our progress in our implementation of the Information Commons. A lot has been happening lately, here's a quick wrap up:

• In June we successfully launched HumanServices.net, an Information Commons-powered website serving the social service community in Allegheny County, PA. The launch received some positive media attention as well as great feedback from the user community.
  
• Our work with reaching out to the research community has also been going well. In July, two articles were published in different publications, BioIT World and BioTech International about our collaboration with Michael Barmada at the University of Pittsburgh.
• I spoke at the Ecological Society of America's Annual Conference in Memphis, TN. The session was standing room only and I was really encouraged by the positive response to the Information Commons message. Quite a few very promising research partnership opportunities were raised that I will be pursuing.
• Later the same week I attended O'Reilly and Nature's SciFoo Camp I will make another post devoted to this gathering, as it was one of the best professional gatherings I have attended.

More news as it happens (I'll try, anyway!)...